Balance The Scales
by GeekyChic123
Summary: A part of the story that was missing from End Game. How can an Avenger go from being a hero, to an unbridled killer feared across the globe?
1. Chapter 1

I hate Clint's family. Come at me, I'll fight you, I wish they didn't exist in the MCU. HOWEVER... I got this idea for a story that goes along with the cannon of him having a family, and I couldn't resist writing it. This is just part of the story I felt was missing from End Game.

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After the battle, and the silence, and the loss, and the shock; The first thing Natasha thought of was Clint. Just the other day they'd been joking about how with his house arrest ending soon, they'd actually be able to see one another outside of his farm. She'd been joking about how she was going to make him come help her on the next mission she got, he'd made snarky comments asking about what it was like being on the run with Captain America. Joked about how she had upgraded from a Hawk, to a Captain.

And now she didn't know if he was even still alive, or if he too was nothing more than dust being whisked away on the wind.

She'd already lost so much in Wakanda. Barnes. Wanda. Sam.

All around her after the loss (because that was what this was... Not a mistake, not a glitch, not an accident, it was a big messy disgusting loss.) there was chaos. People she'd never seen shed a tear were sobbing on the ground, others were screaming out the names of their loved ones hoping they would get an answer. Others were clutching their phones, calling and calling the same numbers, praying the person on the other end would pick up and answer. Hoping maybe their phone just wasn't within reach, praying the ones they were trying to contact hadn't turned to dust.

Natasha wasn't an idiot. She knew if you called someone more than a few times, odds were they were never going to answer again. She'd called Fury three times. Hill twice. The slick spill of panic was already settled deep in her stomach over them. Somehow in her gut she'd already accepted that they were gone.

So why was she still trying to contact Clint? Why couldn't she give up on him yet? She was lurking in an empty hallway of a Waknda lab, avoiding contact with anyone. She didn't have the energy to take on anyone else's grief right now, without doubt that would happen if she started talking to anyone. She was already almost at her breaking point, she couldn't handle anything more right now. Everyone was grieving. She had seen Steve cry, actually break down and sob, for the first time today, it was a sight she'd never be able to erase from her memory. They'd all lost. All of them. The war, the battle and the people that they loved.

She was just praying to a god she didn't know if she still believed in that the only man she fully trusted was still alive.

She hit his number in her phone again, listened to the phone ring. Maybe 17th Time was the charm? Every time he didn't answer, the panic settled in more deeply, made itself a bit more at home. She'd never allowed herself to imagine a world without Barton in it. But now, she realized she might have to.

Call number 18 also went to voicemail, she stalked away from her empty hallway filled with panic, not sure what she was looking for but unable to stay in one place. She had to do something, anything. Assist the wounded, start a tally of who was left, get the hell out of here so she could see how the rest of the world was doing. She had to do something to distract herself from her thoughts. Her fears. Her nightmare come true.

She didn't know where she was going as she stalked the hallways of the lab, didn't know what she was looking for. If she heard the sounds of crying, she would walk in the opposite direction. Maybe she could steal a plane. Fly to the farm, see for herself who (if anyone) had been left behind...

She was walking aimlessly through the halls, when suddenly the phone in her hand started to buzz. She knew even before she looked at it that it was her partner. She hadn't cried since the snap... Hadn't let herself process that because if their loss, half the planet was gone. But hearing her partner sobbing on the other end, asking her if she knew where his family had gone? Listening to the man who had always been her rock breaking down into tears? That was what it finally took to make Natasha break down and let her emotions overtake her.

She tried to open closed doors until one gave way, and she found herself in a closet filled with brooms and bottles of cleaning surprise. She hardly got the door closed behind her before she was sinking to the ground, clutching the phone in her hand like the lifeline it was. Tears were flowing now, but she didn't let them creep into her voice. She had to try and stay strong for him. Because if both of them were broken, they'd never be able to put themselves back together again.

Somehow it almost hurt more to have to tell him the story of what happened. Like saying the words made it more real, more permanent. She wasn't trying to hurt Clint more, but with each name of the fallen that she said, she could feel the additional weight of grief she was adding upon his shoulders. He'd stopped sobbing. But the deadened tone of his voice was haunting.

His question was a plea, the tone one Natasha had never heard before in her partners voice. "Can we do anything to get them back?" She'd been wondering about this for the last few hours, when she realized she didn't know how to answer her stomach churned as if she was going to be sick. "I don't know, but I'm not giving up as long as there's a chance that this can be fixed."

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The next few weeks were hell. Nothing other than pure hell. Natasha made it to Clint's farm, she didn't tell anyone where she was going though anyone who knew her well could have guessed if they'd wanted to.

No one wanted to. Everyone had too much going on those first few days to care about what was happening to anyone else. There was too much misery. Too much guilt.

She'd thought it might be hard to get Barton off the farm. Away from the last place he'd seen his family, away from the last link that he had to them. But he'd been all too happy to leave. She understood that too, though. Knew that sometimes the memories of a place could haunt you so much that you never wanted to return to the place you'd once been happy. When she arrived he'd already had his bag packed, his face had been stony and closed off when she first saw him. Sitting on his couch, waiting for her. The soy had let herself into the farmhouse, using the key she'd been given long ago. Natasha had never been in the house when it was this quiet. Normally when she entered there were small humans flinging themselves at her, voices overlapping, a sense of home. But that day when she entered, the house was dark and melancholy. She'd never seen her partner look so lost before.

But then, it was like he suddenly snapped out of a dream and realized she was there. And then his arms were wrapped around her, and they were both crying. Unable to accept that in a world half gone, that they still each still had their other half. Unable to comprehend the depth of their loss after the battle. They easily could have indulged in their mourning, gotten lost in the overwhelming wave of their sorrow.

Instead, somehow, Clint collected himself first. "Can we please get the hell out of here?" He asked, dragging his arm across his eyes, trying to swipe away at the tears that hadn't even fully stopped falling yet.

The next three weeks were full of arguments, terror, guilt and loss. No one had ever encountered a situation quite like this before, there was no precedent for what one should do in a scenario like the one they were living in. Banner busied himself trying to to create formulas that might be able to bring back those who were gone. Steve worked to pinpoint where Thanos could have fled to. Natasha began running intelligence on those who were left, tried to make sense out of the chaos. A thankless job, but at least one that gave her something to do when she couldn't sleep at night.

And Clint drank until his pain was if not forgotten, then at least numbed to a point where he could bear it. In one sense, Natasha hadn't lost her partner. On the other, the man who only existed to drink until he passed out, who was angry at the world, was nothing like the man she'd known before Thanos had snapped that damn gauntlet.

When Natasha wasn't connecting various governments around the world to one another, trying to make sense of the world Thanos had left behind, she was with Clint. Trying to get him to eat, practically forcing him into the shower so he could clean himself. Prying the half empty bottles out of his hands when she stumbled upon him passed out in various places around the Avengers complex.

Every so often the remaining Avengers would gather for a meeting, which no matter how many times it happened would inevitably be a repeat of the meeting that had been held before. Someone would ask how many were gone, the answer would be "many". Someone else would ask what the status of their fellow teammates was, the answer was "Turned to dust, lost in space or currently trying to rebuild their life in the Avengers complex." Inevitably someone else would ask what their options were for the future. The answers were always depressingly predictable. We can organize rescue and relief operations. Assist with the new census to see who was left on earth. Try and formulate a plan for what could be done if they got the chance to take on Thanos again. It reached a point where the remaining Avengers could have split up and gone back to their places in this new fractured world, but still most of them chose to stay at the Avengers Complex. It helped feed the delusion that something was going to happen soon, aided in the dream that a chance to fix this would pop up, and then they'd be ready to go.

People around the world started to hold funerals and memorial services for the ones they had lost. That almost hurt more than the first initial days of denial. Admitting that the people who'd turned to dust were actually gone made everything more permanent, more real. Natasha had tried to ask Clint if they should hold a service for his family. That had made him even more closed off, he'd lashed out at her demanding to know when she'd become a quitter. To be fair he'd been extremely intoxicated when this conversation had happened, it had still hurt though...

Some of the team had started to accept that nothing was going to go back to the way it was. Everything looked as if it was hopeless, they couldn't see a way to fix anything this time. And then, Tony Stark came back from the dead with a woman who could fly, and another woman who was more robot than human. And the remaining Avengers began to reevaluate what was still possible in this strange new world. If one avenger could come back from the dead, who was to say that the rest of the fallen couldn't do the same?

The future had seemed helpless. There was no clear path back to victory, back to the defeat of Thanos. ButTony changed all that when he came home. They discovered the location of Thanos. Realized the stones could be used to bring back those who were gone, and suddenly they remembered what hope was and just how sweet the possibility of it could be.

Clint had been on a particularly bad binge of drinking the day Tony came back. A couple hours before Starks return, when everyone still thought Iron Man was lost to them forever, Natasha had found her partner passed out in the kitchen of the Avengers complex. When he finally woke up, the first thing the assassin did was reach out for another bottle. Instead of alcohol, he'd found Natasha sitting next to his bed.

She almost hadn't told him. But then Natasha thought about how she hadn't seen a spark of joy or hope in the eyes of her partner in weeks. Remembered so many years ago when the two of them had first met and she thought she'd reached the end of her path on this earth, and Barton had reached out to give her the one thing she thought she'd never get; Hope. Maybe now she could give that same gift back to the man who'd saved her so long ago.

As soon as Clint was awake, he had a knife in his hand. But his eyes were heavy, movements slow. All he'd done the last few weeks was drink and cry, it was clearly starting to have an affect on him. Natasha didn't even bother trying to take the weapon from him. She opened her hands palms up, a sign of helplessness few had ever seen from The Widow. Romanoff took a beat to let her partner wake up a bit more, before dropping the bombshell on him.

"Stark's back. He's alive, came back with that blue chick the raccoon was talking about. And some woman who can fly who said she knew Fury? Apparently he was trying to call her before... Well, before the snap, that's what the pager was for. Anyway, we found Thanos, he's on another planet a couple galaxies away; But the raccoon says he knows how to get there and—- Clint, he used the Stones again. And because he used them, he led us right to him. We think... We think if we have a chance to get them, we can use the stones to bring everyone back."

Barton stared blankly at her for a few long moments, he blinked a few times, shook his head like he couldn't quite believe what she'd just said. The silence spread out, Natasha reached out and grabbed his hands, he was still looking at her in disbelief, and clutched her hands so tightly she could feel bones popping. "...What?" Clint finally asked, unsure if he could process what Romanoff was saying. She repeated herself, going over the most basic details. Tony was back. He'd brought a blue friend with him, along with a flying woman. Together, they'd discovered the location of Thanos. And they were going to make that son of a bitch pay for what he had done.

He just kept blinking and staring at her, she had to explain the situation multiple times.

Finally, he'd focused himself and comprehended what he was being told. His eyes welled up with tears, "You can bring them back? Really?"

She let him continue to squeeze her hands even though the pain was getting overwhelming. "I can't promise that. We don't know what could be waiting for us on the planet. But I can tell you I'll do my best to fix this, you have my word."

Clint was fully crying now, and then somehow the two assassins were locked in an embrace. Rationally they both knew this plan was not definite, that a million different things could go wrong. But in that moment, all they could focus on was the sweet hope that maybe everything could be fixed.

Except of course, the mission didn't go as planned, and absolutely nothing was fixed from it. If anything, things were now worse because not only was there no longer hope that the snap could be reversed but also now they had to bear the confirmation that nothing could be done. Natasha had thought she'd known what defeat was; It was nothing compared to the thick blanket of loss that hung over the ship on the return back to earth. Thor had secluded himself in a tucked away corner of the ship. He probably need help, a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear. But no one had the mental capacity to offer that right now. All that Natasha could think of wasn't about all the people who they had lost, not about the failure that was weighing down upon them. No, the thought that was consuming her brain was that she was going to have to go home and tell her partner that their one chance of bringing back his family was gone.

Natasha had been the one to break bad news before. Had to tell agents she'd lost their friends in the field, been the one to tell Fury that missions had gone horribly wrong. Once she'd been the one to tell Barton that the bullet he'd taken for her on a mission had damaged a nerve in his shoulder, and if it didn't heal properly he'd never be able to shoot a bow the same way again. That was nothing compared to this.

When the ship landed, it was the dead of night. The Avengers Complex was lit up, but no one came out to meet them when they landed. Tony was still probably tethered to an IV, and though Natasha wished otherwise she knew Clint was probably at the bottom of a bottle somewhere on property. She should find him. But dreaded what would happen when she did. It was weird when the person you were dreading talking to, was the only one that you really wanted to see.

The team made their way off the ship, and quickly went their separate ways. No one had the energy for rousing speeches, and rather than having a mission recap they wanted to forget this had ever happened.

Natasha didn't even have a chance to wonder if she should try and find her partner now, or wait until sunrise in a couple hours to talk to him. She opened the door to her room, and Clint was sitting on her bed.

He actually didn't appear to be intoxicated; If he was, the archer was hiding it very well. But there was a sense of desperation about him, Natasha recognized that look in his eyes. It was a look she'd seen in so many of her victims before taking the kill shot. He knew.

"Saw the ship come back. Didn't exactly look like you guys were happy when you got off. Also noticed half the universe is still gone..." A pained silence was drawn out for an uncomfortable amount of time. He knew they had failed, was he really going to make her admit it out loud? Natasha crosses her arms, and leaned against the closed door behind her. "We found him. On his damn garden planet, we ambushed him, he didn't expect a thing. We got the information out of him easily enough; He hardly even put up a fight Clint. It was like he didn't even care, we were just an annoyance to him. We were right when we saw he used the stones again; He used the stones, to destroy the stones. And then Thor lost it, cut Thanos's head off." Natasha could feel the tears cutting paths across her face, but couldn't process that she was crying because suddenly she was back in the little shack that was filled with the scent of some putrid space stew. "He's gone. The stones are gone. I don't know- Clint- I just, I don't know what to do now..."

Natasha felt a tight fist of panic gripping her chest. She hadn't had a panic attack like this in years. Not since Loki, and the call from Coulson telling her that Barton was compromised, when she'd barely made it back to her hotel room before momentarily losing her cool and sobbing into her pillow before pulling herself together. That had seemed like an impossible situation to fix, but looking back that was nothing compared to this.

Somehow Natasha was on the ground now, the door against her back the only thing that was holding her up. She'd known failure before. But who had she really let down in the past in comparison to this? A Red Room operative that didn't care if she lived or died anyway? Fury, on the few times she's returned from missions unsuccessful? Sure, a couple times she'd made poor choices that had let down entire cities, that one time she'd doomed half a country. But this was different. Worse. The weight of failure was like lead in her veins, she couldn't catch her breath between her sobs, the room was spinning as if she was drunk on her tears. The Black Widow never lost it like this.

Then again, The Black Widow had never felt the weight of half of humanity lost, bearing down on her shoulders.

"I'm sorry Clint. We never prepared for this, I didn't train for this. We lost. It's over. I don't know what to do. This was our plan Barton, and it blew up in our faces. I just- I can't- I don't-"

Natasha could hardly breathe, she'd never lost it to this extent before. The few times that she had, Clint had always been her anchor, the weight that pulled her back down to earth. The hand that steadied her, the voice that guided her through these almost foreign emotions Romanoff was normally so very good at ignoring. But now both members of strike team delta were falling apart, neither had the energy to hold the other up.

Natasha was falling apart on the ground, Clint was silent and withdrawn, sitting stock still on her bed. His nails digging into his palms until rivulets of blood flooded his hands, his face white as a ghost. It was like their roles were reversed. For once he was the one that was closed off, she was the one that was sloppily spewing her emotions all over the room. When he spoke, she hardly even recognized his voice.

"So that's it. This is the end, they're all gone." At these words, Natasha shook her head trying to hold back the sobs wracking her body. But even she knew she was in denial. What could be done? Their one chance of hope had disappeared with another snap of the fingers. She choked out the words, "I'm not giving up... We can find a way..." Clint stood up suddenly, the look on his face was one Natasha had never seen on him before. It was furious. Defeated. His eyes looked feral.

"What way, Nat? The stones where our last chance. And they're GONE. It's over. It's done. I lost. You lost. We lost. And what now? Are we just supposed to move on like we didn't lose everything? My family is gone Natasha. Forever. How many terrible people survived that snap? How many didn't turn to dust and now get to spend the rest of the miserable lives killing and stealing? How are they still alive but my children aren't? How have do I have the blood of hundreds on my hands, but I'm the one standing here instead of my wife? How are we supposed to live with this? It isn't fair Nat!" Clint's voice had escalated progressively more and more as his rant continued, until he was full on yelling at his partner.

Natasha wasn't one to let a man verbally assault her like this. But Clint was not saying anything that she hadn't thought of already. How where so many good people gone, but she was still standing? There was no sense to it, hearing Barton voice the thoughts that had been circling through her head for weeks, just made the Russian sink deeper into the despair that was washing over her. She stood up, and took a step towards Clint, not sure what to do or say, unable to just sit and cry any longer.

"It's not Clint, but we are still here. We can still try and help the people left behind. And I'm not going to give up on trying to get the ones we lost back." At these words from his partner, Clint stood up and took an angry step towards her. "They're not lost, Natasha. We didn't lose them, we can't find them on a little road trip across town. They aren't the fallen, they didn't choose to take a risk and lay down their lives in battle. They're gone. Irreplaceably, irreversibly gone, and we can't do anything except live with the fact that we were left behind instead of them. It's not fair."

Natasha took another step towards her partner, there was almost no distance between them now. "Yes, we were the ones left behind. And you're right, it's not fair... I could name two dozen people right now more deserving of a life last that snap than me Barton. You think I don't know there are more deserving people who should be here instead? But we can't change the fact that we're the ones that are still here. And maybe we can do something for the ones left behind, to help, I don't know, help tip the scales back into the balance of good?"

Natasha's mind was addled by her emotions, she didn't fully realize what she was saying. She meant maybe they could find a way to make it, almost more fair that they had been left behind. That they could try and do good, to live in honor of those who were gone. But as she said these words, Clint's spine straightened and something in his eyes turned to ice. The silence drew out longer and longer between them. Natasha's eyes continues to flood with tears, as Barton's turned more and more frosty. Finally he shook his head, and said "It's going to take an awful lot to tip these scales back to anything close to fair Romanoff."

And then, he walked out of the room, and out of her life for the next five years. Natasha tried her best to help fix what had been left behind in the aftermath of Thanos; But, sometimes, honestly far too often, she couldn't help but wonder what exactly what Clint was doing to try and "make the scales more fair" and what more she could have done to try and help her partner.

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This took me almost a week to write. Please comment. If you want another chapter, let me know.


	2. Chapter 2

Clint left the Avengers Complex shortly after their disastrous attempt to get the stones back from Thanos. At first Natasha had thought maybe Barton just needed some time to cool off, to readjust to this new normal. But days turned into weeks, and months into years with no contact from the man who'd once been her best friend. At first Natasha hardly noticed her partners absence, she was so busy trying to clean up what she could of the mess the world had become, that it felt like she blinked and suddenly it had been months since the snap. Time flies when you're trying to rebuild the world from the literal dust it had become.

And it wasn't like he was the only one that was gone. One morning the team woke up and Thor was nowhere to be found. Carol was given an upgraded way to communicate with the team so they could have more than a pager to get in touch, and then she was gone, off to see what was happening elsewhere in the universe. Natasha was used to people leaving her life; She told herself that at least. But as things started to calm down and Romanoff gradually settled into this new normal, loneliness started to gnaw away at her.

For a while a handful of them had set up camp at Headquarters. Rhodey moved his stuff in, Rocket made himself at home. No one really knew where Nebula was living, but she was around often enough that for a while she was part of the team. But it wasn't the same, nothing like what Natasha had lost. Rhodey was rarely at the complex for more than a night or two at a time before going off on his next job, Nebula very much kept to herself. Rocket and Natasha actually got along very well, but again he was working so much they didn't have much contact outside of emails and the occasional team Video Chat. For the first year or so Romanoff struggled to adapt to her new team, and to come to terms with accepting her original Avengers family was gone.

But instead of accepting that she was back to being alone, Natasha found herself unintentionally clinging tighter to those that she had left. She tracked down Thor, tried her best to help him and the rest of his people get back on their feet. More often than not he was too drunk to even have a conversation with her. She tried communicating with Banner, he went off the grid and she didn't have the energy or time to try and find him. And Steve; At first he tried to stick around, but he couldn't accept their loss. Didn't have anything left to give to a world that had taken everything away from him. Natasha would try to pull him into missions, drop hints that she needed help with jobs. Steve would always come up with an excuse. There would be a meeting he HAD to attend. He'd somehow come down with a cold though the super soldier never got sick. Eventually Natasha got the hint and stopped asking him to help her with various jobs, let him focus on starting up his support groups across the country.

Natasha didn't have the guts to tell Steve to his face how much she missed having her friend by her side. Because though she and Cap had started out as partners, she'd grown to cherish their strange unique friendship. But whatever, if this wasn't the life for him anymore she wasn't going to force it on him. She knew what it was like to be trapped in a life that others wanted her to lead.

Solo missions were the new normal for The Avengers, and oddly enough in this new normal Natasha found more often than not she wasn't even the one going on jobs. Somehow the Spy found herself following in Fury's footsteps, setting up her office in the Avengers Complex and using her connections to gather intel on who needed help where around the world.

Natasha had never imagined herself doing this kind of work. She was a spy, a weapon, not a director. Certainly not a leader. And yet somehow she found herself initiating missions. She was the one choosing who should go where, the members of the team who were left would more often than not come to her with problems to solve and questions they wanted her to answer.

Sometimes when she had a moment to pause and think, Natasha wondered if Fury would be proud of her for carrying on with what was left of the Avengers Initiative in his absence.

But thinking about those who were gone caused more hurt than anything else. So, Romanoff did her best to stay busy. Tried to form friendships with her new team, and then pretended it didn't hurt when Rocket and Nebula only wanted to talk about work Natasha had lined up for them. Or when Carol always had an excuse as to why she couldn't come back to earth for a visit, because how juvenile was it for Natasha to get her feelings hurt because someone was prioritizing saving planets over coming over to keep her company?

Steve at least tried to see her when he had the time. He no longer wanted to take part in missions, but every so often he'd show up in her office with a pizza, or Natasha would walk into the kitchen to find the Super Soldier putting away groceries he'd brought for her and anyone else who happened to be around. It wasn't much, but seeing Steve once or twice every few months was better than nothing at all,so Natasha wasn't about to complain.

The Russian tried her best to not focus on those she had lost. But of course in her darkest moments there were some thoughts that couldn't escape her... On particularly bad nights when the spy only had her laptop and a bottle of vodka to keep her company, Natasha would open the file she'd put together where she would place any information that had to do with Barton, and more importantly his current plausible whereabouts.

One night Steve came to the complex to do some laundry, and check in on his teammate. He expected to see her writing up a mission report, maybe find her in the gym working on her target practice. Instead he found the redhead with stacks of papers piling high on her desk, typing furiously into a laptop, with various maps and pictures thrown up in projections around the room. He might not have even known she was intoxicated if not for the almost empty bottle perched on the edge of her desk, and the sharp gleam in her eyes.

A short chuckle escaped her, "Well, if it isn't the good old Captain America. What brings you back around these parts Rogers? Don't tell me you're looking for another guest speaker to come talk to one of your support groups about how great life is even though half the planet is gone."

Steve actually smirked at this, "I told you I wouldn't ask you to do that again, you gave me enough crap the first time I mentioned that idea to you. You're the one that keeps bringing it up." Natasha rolled her eyes at this, the idea of a smile briefly danced across her face. "What can I say? Maybe it's harder for me to let things go."

Steve wasn't in the mood to have this conversation, they'd had this fight before. Instead he chose to change the subject. "What are you working on? Looks like a lot of different places on those maps; Thinking of planning a trip?" The Russian shook her head, waved a hand at the stacks of files piled high on her desk. "You know better Steve, if I leave on a trip who's going to handle all of this? The raccoon?"

As Natasha took another sip out of her bottle, Steve took a peek at one of the open files. Almost instantly he looked away, stomach churning. The folder was crammed full of bloody photos from crime scenes across the globe, Steve had tried to avoid looking too closely but it seemed each of the victims had been slain by a sword.

Natasha lifted an eyebrow at the super soldier, and pulled the open file back towards her, closing it. "Didn't I teach you anything about how to be subtle Rogers? Honestly you may as well have a blinking sign on your head saying "I'm looking at your private files". Natasha's tone was harsh, the alcohol sharpened her tongue to be more biting than usual. She rolled her eyes. "Though to be honest between you dropping us, and Barton disappearing off the face of the earth it makes me regret ever trying to teach you guys anything. Fat lot of good that did me."

Steve flinched at this, "I didn't drop you guys Nat, I'm still here for you. I just think I'm better suited for helping the support groups than I am for helping with whatever missions you come up with. I'm doing more good now than I was before; And if you really do need me you know where to find me." Natasha rolled her eyes, "Yeah at least I know where YOU are. That's more than I can say about some people."

Steve took a second look at the piles of papers. "Is that what you're doing, looking for Barton? Nat, if he's this hard to find maybe he doesn't want to be found..." Natasha just served Steve with a look that could destroy a lesser man. "Oh, well then did Bucky not want to be found either? Because I'm pretty sure you spent years trying to hunt him down before you found him." Sudden anger flared up in Steve. "That was different and you know it! Bucky was brainwashed and I was trying to save him. Barton chose to ditch all of us and traverse the globe, doing the opposite of everything the Avengers ever stood for."

Steve had spoken without thinking, anger blurring his common sense. Almost the second he spoke the Captain regretted his words; especially when Natasha flinched as if she'd been slapped. Her entire face shut down, and she became very still, staring down at the papers in front of her. Steve closed his eyes, looking for something to say that could fix the words that had escaped him. Natasha stood up, swayed slightly for a moment, steadied herself against the desk.

"I think it's time for you to leave, Rogers."

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